The world was black and white, or shades of gray; there was nothing in between. The earliest days were black as a starless night, white as a polished sun - bright enough to blind a girl and leave her shaking in a quivering heap, raven hair pooled on alabaster skin. Dara shuddered now like she had back then, the memory of that sightless womb forever tickling her nape with shivery breath, sending the chill of that other place into her waking world with rhythmic regularity.

Eyes opened in her pale delicate face, violet pools dark and deep - churning, magnetic, dangerous. Eyes that did not belong on this wisp of a girl; eyes of a temptress, eyes of a predator, eyes of a prophet. The world she saw was ash and lead and washed out silver, a dim barren netherworld where her body walked a prisoner, her mouth moved on steely strings. They waited for her words - those ghostly caricatures of humanity - with all the patience and guile of spoiled children. She made them wait, quelling the smile from her lips, willing the chill from her limbs. She blinked those volatile eyes - once, as she bled the air from her lungs . . . twice, where she stilled her beating heart . . . thrice, while she loosed her dreaming mind. A Roc of onyx and argent dove to meet the rising charcoal Phoenix.